People in the streets of Erbil are saying these days, "We are fighting three extremely difficult battles: We fight ISIS with poor and outdated weapons, we struggle to absorb the refugees that have increased our population by 28 percent, and we fight with Baghdad to get our money to survive." In a nutshell, all of it is quite true.

The administration appears to have lost its collective mind. The president has added ground forces to the battle in Iraq and the military has suggested introducing thousands more. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel might be lucky having been left at the curb.

There is little comfort for the displaced people of Qarakosh who see the most recent attacks as perhaps the final act in their expulsion from Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians have left the country in the last two decades. Estimates of the remaining total number of Iraqi Christians are as low as 200,000.

I have been a vocal opponent of that war since George W. Bush proposed the invasion in 2002. I strongly believe that the actions President Obama announced in Iraq last night deserve progressive support.

Iraqi Kurdistan is full of the growing pains and remarkable opportunities of a society that is moving on from violence and redefining a national and regional identity. This is the story we are here to tell.